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Bigger Vision, Bolder Action, Brighter Future

Author(s):

Jim Baller - Baller Herbst Law Group

Casey Lide - Baller Herbst Law Group

Publication Date:

Monday, 2008, June 2

Jim Baller and Casey Lide of the Baller Herbst Law Group produced this tremendous white paper for e-NC. It covers the importance of broadband, relationship to economic development, and offers some recommendations.

This entire site has been greatly informed by this paper. It collects many important examples of how important broadband is and the communities that have greatly benefited by taking action to build networks that responded to their needs.

Although it does not explicitly recommend public owned networks, it provides the foundation for what broadband can offer. This foundation is useful for understanding why privately owned, unaccountable networks are inferior to those that are rooted in the community.

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Opponents of municipal broadband initiatives contend that public broadband projects are “failures” if they do generate “profits” in the amounts, and within the short time periods, that investors and the financial community expect of private corporations. To define success this way is to miss two fundamental points: (1) public entities have fundamentally different ways of creating economic benefits for the community than the private sector; and (2) municipalities often undertake a public communications initiative precisely because the project would not be profitable enough for a private company.